Southern California faces summer power challenge: NERC

South Carolina Energy Freedom Act lifts net metering caps, reforms PURPA, and overhauls utility planning to boost solar competition, grid resiliency, and consumer choice across the Southeast amid Santee Cooper debt and utility monopoly pressure.

Key Points

A bipartisan reform lifting net metering caps, modernizing PURPA, and updating utility planning to expand solar.

✅ Lifts net metering cap to accelerate rooftop and community solar.

✅ Reforms PURPA contracts to enable fair pricing and transparent procurement.

✅ Modernizes utility IRP and opens markets to competition and customer choice.

The South Carolina House has approved the latest version of the Energy Freedom Act, a bill that overhauls the state’s electricity policies, including lifting the net metering caps and reforming PURPA implementation and utility planning processes in a way that advocates say levels the playing field for solar at all scales.

With Governor Henry McMaster (R) expected to sign the bill shortly, this is a major coup not just for solar in the state, but the region. This is particularly notable given the struggle that solar has had just to gain footing in many parts of the South, which is dominated by powerful utility monopolies and conservative politicians.

Two days ago when the bill passed the Senate we covered the details of the policy, but today we’re going to take a look at the politics of getting the Energy Freedom Act passed, and what this means for other Southern states and “red” states.

Opportunity amid crisis

The first thing to note about this bill is that it comes within a crisis in South Carolina’s electricity sector. This was the first legislative session following state-run utility Santee Cooper’s formal abandonment of a project to build two new reactors at the Virgil C. Sumner nuclear power plant, on which work stopped nearly two years ago.

Santee Cooper still holds $4 billion in construction debt related to the nuclear projects. According to an article in The State, this is costing its customers $5 per month toward the current debt, and this will rise to $13 per month for the next 40 years.

Such costs are particularly unwelcome in South Carolina, which has the highest annual electricity bills in the nation due to a combination of very high electricity usage driven by widespread air conditioning during the hot summers and higher prices per unit of power than other Southern states.

Following this fiasco, Santee Cooper’s CEO has stepped down, and the state government is currently considering selling the utility to a private entity. According to Maggie Clark, southeast state affairs senior manager for Solar Energy Industries Association, all of this set the stage for the bill that passed today.

“South Carolina is in a really ripe state for transformational energy policy in the wake of the VC Sumner nuclear plant cancellation,” Clark told pv magazine. “They were looking for a way forward, and I think this bill really provided them something to champion.”

Renewable energy policy for red states

This major win for solar policy comes in a state where the Republican Party holds majorities in both houses of the state’s legislature and sends bills to a Republican governor.

Broadly speaking, Republican politicians seldom show the level of interest in supporting renewable energy that Democrats do either at the state or national level, and show even less inclination to act to address greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, the 100% clean energy mandates that are being implemented in four states and Washington D.C. have only passed with Democratic trifectas, in other words with Republicans controlling neither house of the state legislature nor the governor’s office. (Note: This does not apply to Puerto Rico, which has a different party structure to the rest of the United States)

However, South Carolina shows there are Republican politicians who will support pro-renewable energy policies, and circumstances under which Republican majorities will vote for legislation that aids the adoption of solar. And these specific circumstances speak to both different priorities and ideological differences between the two parties.

SEIA’s Maggie Clark emphasizes that the Energy Freedom Act was about reforming market rules. “This was a way to provide a program that did not provide subsidies or incentives in any way, but to really open the market to competition,” explains Clark. “I think that appealing to conservatives in the South about energy independence and resiliency and ultimately cost savings is the winning message on this issue.”

Such messaging in South Carolina is not an accident. Not only has such messaging been successful in the past, but coalition partner Vote Solar paid for polling to find what messages resounded with the state’s voters, and found that choice and competition were likely to resound.

And all of this happened in the context of what Clark describes as an “extremely well-resourced effort”, with SEIA in particular dedicating national attention and resources to the state – as part of an effort by President and CEO Abigail Hopper to shift attention more towards state-level policy. Maggie Clark is one of two new regional staff who Hopper has hired, and SEIA’s first staff member focused on Southern states.

“Absolutely the South is a prioritized region,” Hopper told pv magazine, noting that three Southern states – the Carolinas and Florida – are among the 12 states that the organization has identified to work on this year. “It became clear that as a region it needed more attention.”

SEIA is not expecting fly-by-night victories, and Hopper attributes the success in South Carolina not only to a broad coalition, but to years of work on the ground in the state.

Nor is SEIA the only organization to grow its presence in the region. Vote Solar now has two full time staff located in the South, whereas two years ago its sole staff member dedicated to the region was located in Washington D.C.

Ideology versus reality in the South

The Energy Freedom Act aligns with conservative ideas about small government and competition, but the American right is not monolithic, nor do political ideas and actions always line up neatly, as other successful policies in other states in the region show

By far the largest deployment of renewable energy in the nation has been in Texas, aside from in California which leads overall. Here a system of renewable energy zones in the sparsely populated but windy and sunny west, north and center of the state feed cities to the east with power from wind and more recently solar.

This was enabled by transmission lines whose cost was socialized among the state’s ratepayers – a tremendous irony given that the state’s politicians would be some of the last in the nation to want to be identified with socializing anything.

Another example is Louisiana, which saw a healthy residential solar market over the last decade due to a 50% state rebate. The policy has expired, but when operating it was exactly the sort of outright subsidy that right-wing media and politicians rail against.

Of course there is also North Carolina, which built the 2nd-largest solar market in the nation on the back of successful state-level implementation of PURPA, a federal law. Finally there is Virginia, where large-scale projects are booming following a 2018 law that found that 5 GW of solar is in the public interest.

Furthermore, while conservatives continually expound the virtues of the free market, the reality of the electricity sector in the “deep red” South is anything but that. The region missed out on the wave of deregulation in the 1990s, and remains dominated by monopoly utilities regulated by the state: a union of big business and big government where competition is non-existent.

This has also meant that the solar which has been deployed in the South is mostly not the kind of rooftop solar that many think of as embodying energy independence, but rather large-scale solar built in farms, fields and forests.

Where to from here?

With such contradictions between stated ideology and practice, it is less clear what makes for successful renewable energy policy in the South. However, opening up markets appears to be working not only in South Carolina, but also in Florida, where third-party solar companies are making inroads after the state’s voters rejected a well-funded and duplicitous utilities’ campaign to kill distributed solar.

SEIA’s Hopper says that she is “aggressively optimistic” about solar in Florida. As utilities have dominated large-solar deployment in the state, even as the state declined federal solar incentives earlier this year, she says that she sees opening up the state’s booming utility-scale solar market to competition as a priority.

Some parts of the region may be harder than others, and it is notable that SEIA has not had as much to say about Alabama, Mississippi or Louisiana, which are largely controlled by utility giants Southern Company and Entergy, or the area under the thumb of the Tennessee Valley Authority, one of the most anti-solar entities in the power sector.

Abby Hopper says ultimately, demand from customers – both individuals and corporations – is the key to transforming policy. “You replicate these victories by customer demand,” Hopper told pv magazine. “That combination of voices from the customer are what’s going to drive change.”

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Energy Policy News

Nuclear fusion breakthrough signals progress toward clean energy as NIF lasers near ignition and net energy gain, while tokamak designs like ITER advance magnetic confinement, plasma stability, and self-sustaining chain reactions for commercial reactors.

Key Points

A milestone as lab fusion nears ignition and net gain, indicating clean energy via lasers and tokamak confinement.

✅ NIF laser shot approached ignition and triggered self-heating

✅ Tokamak path advances with ITER and stronger magnetic confinement

✅ Net energy gain remains the critical milestone for power plants

Just 100 years ago, when English mathematician and astronomer Arthur Eddington suggested that the stars power themselves through a process of merging atoms to create energy, heat, and light, the idea was an unthinkable novelty. Now, in 2021, we’re getting remarkably close to recreating the process of nuclear fusion here on Earth. Over the last century, scientists have been steadily chasing commercial nuclear fusion, ‘the holy grail of clean energy.’ The first direct demonstration of fusion in a lab took place just 12 years after it was conceptualized, at Cambridge University in 1932, followed by the world’s first attempt to build a fusion reactor in 1938. In 1950, Soviet scientists Andrei Sakharov and Igor Tamm propelled the pursuit forward with their development of the tokamak, a fusion device involving massive magnets which is still at the heart of many major fusion pursuits today, including the world’s biggest nuclear fusion experiment ITER in France.

Since that breakthrough, scientists have been getting closer and closer to achieving nuclear fusion. While fusion has indeed been achieved in labs throughout this timeline, it has always required far more energy than it emits, defeating the purpose of the commercial fusion initiative, and elsewhere in nuclear a new U.S. reactor start-up highlights ongoing progress. If unlocked, commercial nuclear fusion would change life as we know it. It would provide an infinite source of clean energy requiring no fossil fuels and leaving behind no hazardous waste products, and many analysts argue that net-zero emissions may be out of reach without nuclear power, underscoring fusion’s promise.

Nuclear fission, the process which powers all of our nuclear energy production now, including next-gen nuclear designs in development, requires the use of radioactive isotopes to achieve the splitting of atoms, and leaves behind waste products which remain hazardous to human and ecological health for up to tens of thousands of years. Not only does nuclear fusion leave nothing behind, it is many times more powerful. Yet, it has remained elusive despite decades of attempts and considerable investment and collaboration from both public and private entities, such as the Gates-backed mini-reactor concept, around the world.

But just this month there was an incredible breakthrough that may indicate that we are getting close. “For an almost imperceptible fraction of a second on Aug. 8, massive lasers at a government facility in Northern California re-created the power of the sun in a tiny hot spot no wider than a human hair,” CNET reported in August. This breakthrough occurred at the National Ignition Facility, where scientists used lasers to set off a fusion reaction that emitted a stunning 10 quadrillion watts of power. Although the experiment lasted for just 100 trillionths of a second, the amount of energy it produced was equal to about “6% of the total energy of all the sunshine striking Earth’s surface at any given moment.”

“This phenomenal breakthrough brings us tantalizingly close to a demonstration of ‘net energy gain’ from fusion reactions — just when the planet needs it,” said Arthur Turrell, physicist and nuclear fusion expert. What’s more, scientists and experts are hopeful that the rate of fusion breakthroughs will continue to speed up, as interest in atomic energy is heating up again across markets, and commercial nuclear fusion could be achieved sooner than ever seemed possible before. At a time when it has never been more important or more urgent to find a powerful and affordable means of producing clean energy, and as policies like the U.K.’s green industrial revolution guide the next waves of reactors, commercial nuclear fusion can’t come fast enough.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Power Generation News

OPG Credit Rating affirmed by DBRS at A (low) issuer and unsecured debt, R-1 (low) CP, Stable trends, backed by a supportive regulatory regime, strong leverage metrics, and provincial support; monitor Darlington Refurbishment costs.

Key Points

It is DBRS's confirmation of OPG at A (low) issuer and unsecured, R-1 (low) CP, with Stable outlooks.

✅ Stable trends; strong cash flow-to-debt and capital ratios

✅ Provincial financing via OEFC; Fair Hydro Trust ring-fenced

✅ Darlington Refurbishment on budget; cost overruns remain risk

DBRS Limited (DBRS) confirmed the Issuer Rating and the Unsecured Debt rating of Ontario Power Generation Inc. (OPG or the Company) at A (low) and the Commercial Paper (CP) rating at R-1 (low), amid sector developments such as Hydro One leadership efforts to repair government relations and measures like staff lockdowns at critical sites.

All trends are Stable. The ratings of OPG continue to be supported by (1) the reasonable regulatory regime in place for the Company's regulated generation facilities, including stable pricing signals for large users, (2) strong cash flow-to-debt and debt-to-capital ratios and (3) continuing financial support from its shareholder, the Province of Ontario (the Province; rated AA (low) with a Stable trend by DBRS). The Province, through its agent, the Ontario Electricity Financial Corporation (rated AA (low) with a Stable trend by DBRS), provides most of OPG's financing (approximately 43% of consolidated debt). The Company's remaining debt includes project financing (31%), including projects such as a battery energy storage system proposed near Woodstock, non-recourse debt issued by Fair Hydro Trust (Senior Notes rated AAA (sf), Under Review with Negative Implications by DBRS; 11%), CP (2%) and Senior Notes issued under the Medium Term Note Program (12%).

In March 2019, the Province introduced 'Bill 87, Fixing the Hydro Mess Act, 2019' which includes winding down the Fair Hydro Plan, and later introduced electricity relief to mitigate customer bills during the COVID-19 pandemic. OPG will remain as the Financial Services Manager for the outstanding Fair Hydro Trust debt, which will become obligations of the Province. DBRS does not expect this development to have a material impact on the Company as (1) the Fair Hydro Trust debt will continue to be bankruptcy-remote and ring-fenced from OPG (all debt is non-recourse to the Company) and (2) the credit rating on the Company's investment in the Subordinated Notes (rated AA (sf), Under Review with Negative Implications by DBRS) will likely remain investment grade while the Junior Subordinated Notes (rated A (sf), Under Review with Developing Implications by DBRS) will not necessarily be negatively affected by this change (see the DBRS press release, 'DBRS Maintains Fair Hydro Trust, Series 2018-1 and Series 2018-2 Notes Under Review,' dated March 26, 2019, for more details).

OPG's key credit metrics improved in 2018, following the approval of its 2017-2021 rates application by the Ontario Energy Board in December 2017, alongside the Province's energy-efficiency programs that shape demand. The Company's profitability strengthened significantly, with corporate return on equity (ROE) of 7.8% (adjusted for a $205 million gain on sale of property; 5.1% in 2017) closer to the regulatory allowed ROE of 8.78%. However, DBRS continues to view a positive rating action as unlikely in the short term because of the ongoing large capital expenditures program, including the $12.8 billion Darlington Refurbishment project, amid ongoing oversight following the nuclear alert investigation in Ontario. However, a downgrade could occur should there be significant cost overruns with the Darlington Refurbishment project that result in stranded costs. DBRS notes that the Darlington Refurbishment project is currently on budget and on schedule.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Utility Operations News

Kenya Power token glitches, inflated bills disrupt prepaid meters via M-Pesa paybill 888880 and third-party vendors like Vendit and Dynamo, causing delays, fast-depleting tokens, and billing estimates; customers report weekend outages and business losses.

Key Points

Service failures delaying token generation and disputed charges from estimated meter readings and slow processing.

✅ Impacts M-Pesa paybill 888880 and authorized third-party vendors

✅ Causes delays, fast-depleting tokens, weekend business closures

✅ Linked to system downtime, billing estimates, meter reading gaps

Kenya Power is again on the spotlight following claims of inflated power bills and a glitch in its electronic payment system that made it impossible to top up tokens on prepaid meters.

Thousands of customers started experiencing the hitch in tokens generation on Friday evening, with the problem extending through the weekend.

Small businesses such as barber shops that top up multiple times a week were hardest hit.

“My business usually thrives during weekends but I was forced to close early in the evening due to lack of power although I had paid for the tokens that were never generated,” said Mr John Kamau, a fast food restaurant owner in Nairobi.

Kenya Power processes up to 200,000 electronic transactions per day for power users, with 85 per cent done through its Safaricom M-Pesa paybill number 888880.

The remaining share is handled by its authorised third party vendors such as Vendit (paybill number 501200) and Dynamo (800904), which charge a premium for the transaction.

The sole electricity distributor admitted its system encountered challenges that crippled token generation across all vendors, advising customers on prepaid meters to buy the units from Kenya Power banking halls across the country until normalcy returned.

STATEMENT

“The IT team is trying to figure out where the problem was before we issue a comprehensive statement on the issue,” the firm responded to Nation queries, adding that the issue had been resolved by yesterday afternoon.

Customers who use Vendit confirmed to Nation they had successfully bought tokens yesterday afternoon.

However, there have been complaints that third party vendors process tokens almost in real time, unlike Kenya Power which, despite indicating a 30 minute delay in its service promise, sometimes takes up to six hours.  

But other users complained of inflated power bills after being slapped with abnormally high charges.

TOKENS

The holder of account number 30624694, for instance, received a post-paid bill of Sh16,765 last month, up from Sh894 the previous month.

She indulged the company and ended up paying just over Sh1,000.

There have also been complaints of tokens getting depleted too fast. For instance, one customer who normally uses Sh4,000 per month complained of her credit running out in a week.

Kenya Power maintains it cannot read all post-paid meters across the country, compelling it to make estimates for a number of customers.

The company argues it is not cost-effective to have meter readers go to all homes. The firm recently indicated plans to put all domestic consumers on prepaid meters to reduce non-payment of electricity bills and cut operation costs on meter reading and postage.

POWER CONSUMPTION

The Nairobi Securities Exchange-listed firm has also adopted a new integrated customer management system to enable consumers to self-check their power consumption and understand their electricity bill and payment obligations through a phone app.

In the past, concerns have been rife that customers often encounter delays when buying tokens through paybill number 888880, unlike through other vendors.

This has raised questions on the ownership of the vendors and the cash commissions they are entitled to, with holiday scam warnings circulating in some markets as well.

FOUL PLAY

Kenya Power has, however, denied any foul play, saying the authorisation of other vendors was to ease pressure on its payment channel, which handles 85 per cent of the nearly 200,000 transactions per day.

“In fact we have 11 vendors, including Equitel, it’s just that people are only aware of Vendit and Dynamo because they have been aggressive in their marketing,” the company said.

Kenya Power has been battling court cases over inflated power bills after it emerged that the utility firm was backdating bills worth Sh10.1 billion from last November.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Energy Policy News

Alaska Coal-Fired CHP Plant opens near Usibelli mine, supplying electricity and district heat to UAF; remote location without gas pipelines, low wind and solar potential, and high heating demand shaped fuel choice.

Key Points

A 17 MW coal CHP at UAF producing power and campus heat, chosen for remoteness and lack of gas pipelines.

✅ 17 MW generator supplying electricity and district heat

✅ Near Usibelli mine; limited pipeline access shapes fuel

✅ Alternative options like LNG, wind, solar not cost-effective

One way to boost coal in the US: Find a spot near a mine with no access to oil or natural gas pipelines, where it’s not particularly windy and it’s dark much of the year.

That’s how the first coal-fired plant to open in the U.S. since 2015 bucked the trend in an industry that’s seen scores of facilities close in recent years. A 17-megawatt generator, built for $245 million, is set to open in April at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, just 100 miles from the state’s only coal mine.

“Geography really drove what options are available to us,” said Kari Burrell, the university’s vice chancellor for administrative services, in an interview. “We are not saying this is ideal by any means.”

The new plant is arriving as coal fuels about 25 percent of electrical generation in the U.S., down from 45 percent a decade earlier, even as some forecasts point to a near-term increase in coal-fired generation in 2021. A near-record 18 coal plants closed in 2018, and 14 more are expected to follow this year, according to BloombergNEF.

The biggest bright spot for U.S. coal miners recently has been exports to overseas power plants. At home, one of the few growth areas has been in pizza ovens.

There are a handful of other U.S. coal power projects that have been proposed, including plans to build an 850 megawatt facility in Georgia and an 895 megawatt plant in Kansas, even as a Minnesota utility reports declining coal returns across parts of its portfolio. But Ashley Burke, a spokeswoman for the National Mining Association, said she’s unaware of any U.S. plants actively under development besides the one in Alaska.

Future of power

“The future of power in the U.S. does not include coal,” Tessie Petion, an analyst for HSBC Holdings Plc, said in a research note, a view echoed by regions such as Alberta retiring coal power early in their transition.

Fairbanks sits on the banks of the Chena River, amid the vast subarctic forests in the heart of Alaska. The oil and gas fields of the state’s North slope are 500 miles north. The nearest major port is in Anchorage, 350 miles south.

The university’s new plant is a combined heat and power generator, which will create steam both to generate electricity and heat campus buildings. Before opting for coal, the school looked into using liquid natural gas, wind and solar, bio-mass and a host of other options, as new projects in Southeast Alaska seek lower electricity costs across the region. None of them penciled out, said Mike Ruckhaus, a senior project manager at the university.

The project, financed with university and state-municipal bonds, replaces a coal plant that went into service in 1964. University spokeswoman Marmian Grimes said it’s worth noting that the new plant will emit fewer emissions.

The coal will come from Usibelli Coal Mine Inc., a family-owned business that produces between 1.2 and 2 million tons per year from a mine along the Alaska railroad, according to the company’s website.

While any new plant is good news for coal miners, Clarksons Platou Securities Inc. analyst Jeremy Sussman said this one is "an isolated situation."

“We think the best producers can hope for domestically is a slow down in plant closures,” he said, even as jurisdictions like Alberta close their last coal plant entirely.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Power Generation News

Ontario Global Adjustment Charge faces constitutional scrutiny as a regulatory charge vs tax; Court of Appeal revives case over electricity pricing, feed-in tariff contracts, IESO policy, and hydro rate impacts on consumers and industry.

Key Points

A provincial electricity fee funding generator contracts, now central to a court fight over tax versus regulatory charge.

✅ Funds gap between market price and contracted generator rates

✅ At issue: regulatory charge vs tax under constitutional law

✅ Linked to feed-in tariff, IESO policy, and hydro rate hikes

Ontario’s court of appeal has decided that a constitutional challenge of a steep provincial electricity charge should get its day in court, overturning a lower-court judgment that had dismissed the legal bid.

Hamilton, Ont.-based National Steel Car Ltd. launched the challenge in 2017, saying Ontario’s so-called global adjustment charge was unconstitutional because it is a tax — not a valid regulatory charge — that was not passed by the legislature.

The global adjustment funds the difference between the province’s hourly electricity price and the price guaranteed under contracts to power generators. It is “the component that covers the cost of building new electricity infrastructure in the province, maintaining existing resources, as well as providing conservation and demand management programs,” the province’s Independent Electricity System Operator says.

However, the global adjustment now makes up most of the commodity portion of a household electricity bill, and its costs have ballooned, as regulators elsewhere consider a proposed 14% rate hike in Nova Scotia.

Ontario’s auditor general said in 2015 that global adjustment fees had increased from $650 million in 2006 to more than $7 billion in 2014. She added that consumers would pay $133 billion in global adjustment fees from 2015 to 2032, after having already paid $37 billion from 2006 to 2014.

National Steel Car, which manufactures steel rail cars and faces high electricity rates that hurt Ontario factories, said its global adjustment costs went from $207,260 in 2008 to almost $3.4 million in 2016, according to an Ontario Court of Appeal decision released on Wednesday.

The company claimed the global adjustment was a tax because one of its components funds electricity procurement contracts under a “feed-in tariff” program, or FIT, which National Steel Car called “the main culprit behind the dramatic price increases for electricity,” the decision said.

Ontario’s auditor general said the FIT program “paid excessive prices to renewable energy generators.” The program has been ended, but contracts awarded under it remain in place.

National Steel Car claimed the FIT program “was actually designed to accomplish social goals unrelated to the generation of electricity,” such as helping rural and indigenous communities, and was therefore a tax trying to help with policy goals.

“The appellant submits that the Policy Goals can be achieved by Ontario in several ways, just not through the electricity pricing formula,” the decision said.

National Steel Car also argued the global adjustment violated a provincial law that requires the government to hold a referendum for new taxes.

“The appellant’s principal claim is that the Global Adjustment was a ‘colourable attempt to disguise a tax as a regulatory charge with the purpose of funding the costs of the Policy Goals,’” the decision said. “The appellant pressed this argument before the motion judge and before this court. The motion judge did not directly or adequately address it.”

The Ontario government applied to have the challenge thrown out for having “no reasonable cause of action,” and a Superior Court judge did so in 2018, saying the global adjustment is not a tax.

National Steel Car appealed the decision, and the decision published Wednesday allowed the appeal, set aside the lower-court judgment, and will send the case back to Superior Court, where it could get a full hearing.

“The appellant’s claim is sufficiently plausible on the evidentiary record it put forward that the applications should not have been dismissed on a pleadings motion before the development of a full record,” wrote Justice Peter D. Lauwers. “It is not plain, obvious and beyond doubt that the Global Adjustment, and particularly the challenged component, is properly characterized as a valid regulatory charge and not as an impermissible tax.”

Jerome Morse of Morse Shannon LLP, one of National Steel Car’s lawyers, said the Ontario government would now have 60 days to decide whether to seek permission to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

“What the court has basically said is, ‘this is a plausible argument, here are the reasons why it’s plausible, there was no answer to this,’” Morse told the Financial Post.

Ontario and the IESO had supported the lower-court decision, but there has been a change in government since the challenge was first launched, with Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Ford replacing the Liberals and Kathleen Wynne in power. The Liberals had launched a plan aimed at addressing hydro costs before losing in a 2018 election, the main thrust of which had been to refinance global adjustment costs.

Wednesday’s decision states that “Ontario’s counsel advised the court that the current Ontario government ‘does not agree with the former government’s electricity procurement policy (since-repealed).’

“The government’s view is that: ‘The solution does not lie with the courts, but instead in the political arena with political actors,’” it adds.

A spokesperson for Ontario Energy Minister Greg Rickford said in an email that they are reviewing the decision but “as this matter is in the appeal period, it would be inappropriate to comment.” 

Ontario had also requested to stay the matter so a regulator, the Ontario Energy Board, could weigh in, while the Nova Scotia regulator approved a 14% hike in a separate case.

“However, Ontario only sought this relief from the motion judge in the alternative, and given the motion judge’s ultimate decision, she did not rule on the stay,” Thursday’s decision said. “It would be premature for this court to rule on the issue, although it seems incongruous for Ontario to argue that the Superior Court is the convenient forum in which to seek to dismiss the applications as meritless, but that it is not the convenient forum for assessing the merits of the applications.”

National Steel Car’s challenge bears a resemblance to the constitutional challenges launched by Ontario and other provinces over the federal government’s carbon tax, but Justice Lauwers wrote “that the federal legislative scheme under consideration in those cases is distinctly different from the legislation at issue in this appeal.”

“Nothing in those decisions impacts this appeal,” the judge added.
 

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Energy Policy News